WJEC PY2 revision cards

ASCH- OPINIONS AND SOCIAL PRESSURE: Aims and Conte

Aims

Asch aimed to investigate the effects of group pressure on individuals in unambiguous situations. He wanted to find out if, when confronted with an obviously incorrect answer, individuals would give an answer which showed they conformed or whether they would behave indpendently.

Context

JENNESS- Jenness put beans in a jar and asked participants to judge how many beans werein there. He then put participants into groups and asked them to complete the task again. Jenness found that the participants conformed to a group norm (a middle number)

SHERIF-looked at the autokinetic effect, he put participants in a dark room and asked participants to guess how far the light had moved. The participants then were put in groups and asked to discuss. Again the participants conformed to a group norms.

ASCHnoticed that in both studies the tests were ambiguous, there was no blatantly right answer, he wanted to know if people would still conform if there was a obvious answer

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ASCH- OPINIONS AND SOCIAL PRESSURE: Procedures

¡Procedures:
The original study- 123 US male student volunteers from three different colleges were recruited for a ‘vision’ test. In each session there was one naive participant and a group of between 6 to 8 confederates. Participants were seated in a room where the naïve participant was always seated last. Participants were shown two large cards- one with a standard line and the other with three vertical lines of various lengths. One of the three lines is of the same length as the standard line, the others are very different. Participants have to announce their answers out loud to the group in the order they have been seated in, Unknown to the true naïve participant, the other students are confederates. They have been instructed on 12 out of 18 trials called the critical trials to give the wrong answer. The participant is placed in position in which while he is giving the correct answers he is in an uncomfortable minority of 1 opposed by a unanimous opinion of a group of his peers.¡Additional procedures:
Size-The size of the group was varied from 1-15 persons
Truthful partner- Another person was truthful (either confederate or another naïve participant
Inaccurate partner-A confederate was introduced who disagreed with the majority but also disagreed with the naïve participant.